Timely Expansion

These days every site seems to have on-line discussion forums, chat, e-mail, link databases and what not. Resist this, for the moment. You don't need a link database when you have 20 links to the best places within the field you're working. Use an online link checker on that page and be done with it.

A link database implies masses of information, and you're bound to disappoint if that information doesn't exist. When you feel that your manual work is getting out of hand (max a couple of hundred links), then you should use a database. The task of moving the data into the database is certainly feasible at that point.

The same is true for an on-line discussion forum, why show people how few users you have? If people don't request forums, then they aren't needed. If you find out that demand is growing, release the forum for a select group of people. Ask them to test it out, and see if it is okay. This is only a ploy to generate some content which will be there when you "release" the forums to the public. It also gives that select group the feeling of being important, you ask them for a favor, and thus they feel a stronger bond to you.

Why give e-mail accounts to people at your site? Why compete with Hotmail in areas were they already have cornered the market? Most people almost certainly have an existing e-mail account anyway. This is a service which you really can live without. Of course, if your site gets very popular, vanity accounts could be interesting. For branding purposes these vanity accounts can be used as prizes, as part of association contracts, something to give the contributors in addition to other payment, etc. Usually such vanity accounts needs to be nothing more than a forwarding address.

Chat isn't much more than real time discussions. Adding chat options to a site is at best wasted if no-one uses it, and as I mentioned above, worse than wasted if it show-cases your lack of users. Though it is a chicken and egg situtaion for this functionality, much more so than for a discussion group. It requires a much larger user base than discussions, since you are relying on enough people being on-line simultaneously to create some activity at all. Getting people to use chat regularly is thus much harder. And finally, where does your revenue come from? If you use discussion forums you can display quite a few number of ads to those contributing than you can when using chat. At least less unobstrusively.

In the end your best option for your site's development is to keep true to the goal of your site. Consentrate on creating the content your customer wants, add functionality when the users demand it, and introduce it slowly to select groups of your user base in order to generate support and content for the new features.

It is also true that community building is the name of the game, it is what draws people back, indeed, this is what my column is about. But be careful, you shouldn't indulge in every whim of your readers or your developers. If the cost of implementing something is low, and the PR-cost is positive, or at least has negligible cost, then go for the change. If the implementation just seems to justify someone's paycheck or contract, then carefully review the change, and consider if you can get it cheaper by other means, or if it isn't needed at all. By the way, that doesn't neccessarily mean you have to throw out the old system.

My advice must be weighted against what the public expects. Most people expect all the functionality above, and more, from any site. The point is that if I start a completely new site, with no users, and only a couple of my own articles, then I can afford to add all the above functionality (from free packages like eZ publish) from the beginning. I'm new, I've got nothing to loose.

But you, on the other hand, who have a lot of articles already, a successful site with many users, you want to be careful with what you add, and what you change. You want to keep your loyal users and not shooing them out by doing sudden changes. Thus my careful advice is to introduce new features to the loyal customers first, and let them establish a foothold before allowing the hoi polloi to use the feature.